Ihave competed in many robotic
combat events and taught classes
about the basics of that part of the
hobby, but I have never judged any
sort of competition. It was with a little
trepidation then that I accepted a
request to be a judge at a FIRST Tech
Challenge (FTC) Regional
Championship held at the NC A & T
State University in Greensboro, NC.

The FTC is a very different type
of competition from the high speeds
and energies involved in robotic
conflict. There, the only place where
you win or lose is in the arena,
perhaps in a fight that lasts only
seconds. In the FTC, it takes a much
wider skill set to triumph. Details of
competition requirements can be
found at www.usfirst.org, but
basically FTC is a lower cost version of
the original FIRST competition using
parts from the Vex kits ( www.vex
robotics.com).

Teams are made up of high

FIGURE 1

school kids, their coaches, and
mentors. The coaches and mentors
can offer guidance but it’s the kids
that have to do the work. It’s that
part that I was asked to help judge.

The competition was held in the
basketball arena in the Corbett Gym
on campus. My son, Andrew, came
with me and we arrived early, as
requested, so we could get a clear
view of the two arenas (Figure 1).

The judges were divided up into
five teams of three. Each set of three
had to rank six teams and their
robots. We had to look at the bots
and rate the designs for innovation
and construction, examine the team’s

“Workbook” to see the development
process the team went through to
reach their final design, and finally
interview the teams themselves to see
how they organized and raised the
funds necessary to compete. We
also had to wander around the pits
to see how teams organized and
conducted themselves and
how they interacted with
everyone else.

The robots varied from
very simple, four-wheeled
platforms with perhaps one
simple arm, to complex
chassis with multi-speed
gearboxes and complex
arms and devices to pick
up and carry rings.

The team workbooks
were by far the most useful
measure of how much
work and development had
gone into the different
entries. Some workbooks

consisted of only a few pages with
scant details while others were dozens
of pages long with many pictures,
meeting minutes, calculations, and
diagrams.

The team interviews revealed
team dynamics — who really did the
work and how hard they worked to
get the finances required to get all
the Vex parts and pay for the travel
required to compete at the regional
level. Again, there was a wide
variation in the teams.

For the competitions, we were
judging based on six separate awards:
Amaze, Connect, Innovate, Motivate,
Think, and Inspire. Of course,
there are unique and overlapping
requirements for each category.
The Inspire award is regarded as the
most prestigious.

Once all of the teams had been
interviewed, the judges retired to
consider which groups stood out the
most and which should receive each
award. While this was going on, the
competition proper got underway.

The arena is set up with a
predetermined number and design
of platforms, posts, and stacked
colored rings (Figure 2). Teams are
then combined at random into
pairs who will compete together,
representing either red or blue.
There is a brief period where the bots
operate autonomously and then they
are radio-controlled for the rest of the
round. The scoring system is fairly
complex but basically it comes down
to getting as many of your teams’
colored rings either in your base, on
one of the platforms, or on top of